Dortmund Rd5 – Karjakin joins Kramnik and Ponomariov for lead

7/17/2012 – The fourth round was such a lukewarm affair, there was nothing to remark on the five draws other than their exercise in symmetry at the end. Round five was another story altogether. While Kramnik and Ponomariov were unable to decide anything, Karjakin beat Daniel Fridman in a powerful game, Caruana outclassed Gustaffson in their encounter, and Bartel lost to Naiditsch. Illustrated report.

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From Thursday July 13 to Sunday July 22, 2012 the 41st edition annual Sparkassen
Chess-Meeting is taking place in Dortmund, Germany. It is a ten-player round
robin played. Draw offers are not allowed – a game
can only be declared a draw, by the arbiter, if there is no possible win for
one side, or if a position is repeated three times. The winner of the tournament
will be determined after nine rounds.

Games start at 15:00h = 3 p.m. local time (CEST, = 17:00 Moscow, 14:00 p.m.
London, 9:00 a.m. New York). All games will be broadcast by the official web
site's "Live
Games" page and on the Playchess.com
server. As in the previous year the moves of the Sparkassen Chess-Meeting
will be transmitted on the Internet with a delay of 15 minutes – which
means that the moves stay in the playing hall for that period, before they are
broadcast to the rest of the world. This is an important anti-cheating measure
that has been proposed to FIDE since October 2005 and has the support of most
of the top players. We commend the Dortmund organisers for taking the initiative.

Round four

Round 4: Monday, July 16, 15:00h

Jan Gustafsson

½-½

Mateusz Bartel

Ruslan Ponomariov

½-½

Sergey Karjakin

Arkadij Naiditsch

½-½

Vladimir Kramnik

Daniel Fridman

½-½

Georg Meier

Peter Leko

½-½

Fabiano Caruana

Karjakin might have hoped to take the lead by beating Ponomariov, but it was not to be

The fourth round was at best lukewarm, and while no criticism is being leveled at the players, the fact is that all the games ended in draws, and nearly all resulted in an exercise in symmetry. The upside of all this was that it meant a break in the losing streak by both Bartel and Gustafsson, who faced off against each other.

Neither player came very inspired and who could blame them?

Round five

Round 5: Tuesday, July 17, 15:00h

Fabiano Caruana

1-0

Jan Gustafsson

Vladimir Kramnik

½-½

Ruslan Ponomariov

Mateusz Bartel

0-1

Arkadij Naiditsch

Sergey Karjakin

1-0

Daniel Fridman

Georg Meier

½-½

Peter Leko

The fifth round was another story altogether. The joint leaders Vladimir Kramnik and Ruslan Ponomariov clashed, but neither was able to gain anything significant, and while they certainly prodded each other’s position, the draw was no surprise. Georg Meier and Peter Leko also drew, but that is where the peaceful results ended.

Sergey Karjakin took advantage of Daniel Fridman's first mistake and joined the leaders

Daniel Fridman suffered a loss after a decisive mistake allowed Sergey Karjakin to penetrate the 7th with his rooks. He had few chances and was forced to capitulate, allowing the young Russian to join the leaders at the top with 3.5/5.

You'd never think those hunched shoulders of Fabiano Caruana hid a confident predator
just
waiting to pounce on his opponent Jan Gustafsson.

The next winner was Fabiano Caruana, who played an impressive game against Jan Gustaffsson, first pressuring him and then bullying his opponent into submission. Finally Mateusz Bartel was unable to find his footing in his game against Arkadij Naiditsch and succumbed after a long defense in the endgame.

See also

3/27/2018 – Sergey Karjkin didn't succeed in posing serious problems for Ding Liren and after, what he called, a "terrible blunder", he had to scramble to save a draw. That left Caruana in great shape to win the tournament. Mamedyarov struggled to find winning chances with black against Kramnik, but in the end that game ended drawn as well. Caruana, needing only a draw, was in command against Grischuk and even won the game to finish in clear first by a full point! | Photo and drawings by World Chess

See also

1/28/2018 – Magnus Carlsen won the 80th Tata Steel Masters which was decided in a blitz tiebreak over Dutch number one Anish Giri. The players contested two blitz games with 5 minutes plus 3 seconds per move, with no sudden death Armageddon game needed. Vidit played solidly to earn a draw that was enough to win the Challengers, as Korobov could not manage to pull off a win with black on-demand. | Photo: Alina l'Ami TataSteelChess.com

Video

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